On the Beach and in the Bag: The Fate of Dieppe Casualties Left Behind

When the last Allied ships drew away from the beaches of Dieppe on 19 August 1942, they left behind over 2,700 of the 4,963 Canadians who had embarked on the raid: 807 men were dead, including four Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps [RCAMC] medical orderlies, and 1,946 (including four Canadian Medical Officers (MOs), a chaplain, and at least 11 RCAMC medical orderlies and 48 accredited stretcher-bearers) were abandoned to German captivity on the beaches and environs.1 As Lord Lovat wrote decades after the event, “the raid was an exceedingly bitter experience, learnt the hard way.”2 It is to the fate of these nearly two thousand men, and in particularly the 568 who had been wounded and then captured, that this article is devoted. Many of the survivors faced lengthy hospitalization and rehabilitation, frequently under the care of POW medical personnel rather than German doctors. The account of that medical treatment is one of the untold stories of the Dieppe raid

An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force

This paper explores racial differences in police use of force. On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with a model in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference for discrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings

Evaluation of Intra- and Interscanner Reliability of MRI Protocols for Spinal Cord Gray Matter and Total Cross-Sectional Area Measurements.

BackgroundIn vivo quantification of spinal cord atrophy in neurological diseases using MRI has attracted increasing attention.PurposeTo compare across different platforms the most promising imaging techniques to assess human spinal cord atrophy.Study typeTest/retest multiscanner study.SubjectsTwelve healthy volunteers.Field strength/sequenceThree different 3T scanner platforms (Siemens, Philips, and GE) / optimized phase sensitive inversion recovery (PSIR), T1 -weighted (T1 -w), and T2 *-weighted (T2 *-w) protocols.AssessmentOn all images acquired, two operators assessed contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) between gray matter (GM) and white matter (WM), and between WM and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF); one experienced operator measured total cross-sectional area (TCA) and GM area using JIM and the Spinal Cord Toolbox (SCT).Statistical testsCoefficient of variation (COV); intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC); mixed effect models; analysis of variance (t-tests).ResultsFor all the scanners, GM/WM CNR was higher for PSIR than T2 *-w (P < 0.0001) and WM/CSF CNR for T1 -w was the highest (P < 0.0001). For TCA, using JIM, median COVs were smaller than 1.5% and ICC >0.95, while using SCT, median COVs were in the range 2.2-2.75% and ICC 0.79-0.95. For GM, despite some failures of the automatic segmentation, median COVs using SCT on T2 *-w were smaller than using JIM manual PSIR segmentations. In the mixed effect models, the subject was always the main contributor to the variance of area measurements and scanner often contributed to TCA variance (P < 0.05). Using JIM, TCA measurements on T2 *-w were different than on PSIR (P = 0.0021) and T1 -w (P = 0.0018), while using SCT, no notable differences were found between T1 -w and T2 *-w (P = 0.18). JIM and SCT-derived TCA were not different on T1 -w (P = 0.66), while they were different for T2 *-w (P < 0.0001). GM area derived using SCT/T2 *-w versus JIM/PSIR were different (P < 0.0001).Data conclusionThe present work sets reference values for the magnitude of the contribution of different effects to cord area measurement intra- and interscanner variability.Level of evidence1 Technical Efficacy: Stage 4 J. Magn. Reson. Imaging 2019;49:1078-1090

Insects Taken at Japanese Beetle Traps Baited with Anethole-Eugenol in Southern Michigan in 1968

A survey of the populations of Jap.anese beetles, Popillia japonica Newman, is made each year in southern Michigan to determine the abundance and distribution of this pest insect. Since little information is available about the insects that are attracted by Japanese beetle attractants in Michigan or anywhere in the United States, a study was made of the insects captured in Japanese beetle traps

Injecting Successful Charter School Strategies into Traditional Public Schools: A Field Experiment in Houston

We implemented five strategies gleaned from practices in achievement-increasing charter schools – increased instructional time, a more rigorous approach to building human capital of teachers and administrators, high-dosage tutoring, frequent use of data to inform instruction, and a culture of high expectations – in twenty of the lowest performing schools in Houston, Texas. We show that the average impact of these changes on student achievement is 0.206 standard deviations in math and 0.043 standard deviations in reading, per year, which is comparable to reported impacts of attending high-performing charter schools. This suggests that the best practices of charter schools may be general lessons about the education production function.

Phase behavior of three-component ionic fluids

We study the phase behavior of solutions consisting of positive and negative ions of valence z to which a third ionic species of valence Z>z is added. Using a discretized Debye-Hueckel theory, we analyze the phase behavior of such systems for different values of the ratio Z/z. We find, for Z/z>1.934, a three-phase coexistence region and, for Z/z>2, a closed (reentrant) coexistence loop at high temperatures. We characterize the behavior of these ternary ionic mixtures as function of charge asymmetry and temperature, and show the complete phase diagrams for the experimentally relevant cases of Z/z=2 and Z/z=3, corresponding to addition of divalent and trivalent ions to monovalent ionic fluids, respectively.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures; to appear in the European Physical Journal

A Measure of Segregation Based on Social Interactions

We develop an index of segregation based on two premises: (1) a measure of segregation should disaggregate to the level of individuals, and (2) an individual is more segregated the more segregated are the agents with whom she interacts. We present an index that satisfies (1) and (2) and that is based on agents' social interactions: the extent to which blacks interact with blacks, whites with whites, etc. We use the index to measure school and residential segregation. Using detailed data on friendship networks, we calculate levels of within-school racial segregation in a sample of U. S. schools. We also calculate residential segregation across major U. S. cities, using block-level data from the 2000 U. S. Census

Virial expansion for charged colloids and electrolytes

Using a field-theoretic approach, we derive the first few coefficients of the exact low-density (``virial'') expansion of a binary mixture of positively and negatively charged hard spheres (two-component hard-core plasma, TCPHC). Our calculations are nonperturbative with respect to the diameters $d_+$ and $d_-$ and charge valences $q_+$ and $q_-$ of positive and negative ions. Consequently, our closed-form expressions for the coefficients of the free energy and activity can be used to treat dilute salt solutions, where typically $d_+ \sim d_-$ and $q_+ \sim q_-$, as well as colloidal suspensions, where the difference in size and valence between macroions and counterions can be very large. We show how to map the TCPHC on a one-component hard-core plasma (OCPHC) in the colloidal limit of large size and valence ratio, in which case the counterions effectively form a neutralizing background. A sizable discrepancy with the standard OCPHC with uniform, rigid background is detected, which can be traced back to the fact that the counterions cannot penetrate the colloids. For the case of electrolyte solutions, we show how to obtain the cationic and anionic radii as independent parameters from experimental data for the activity coefficient.Comment: 15 page